He came as close then to walking away as he ever did. Despite all the risks he had taken. All the costs and cunning it took to gain entry to the Azath. He nearly slammed back the chair and walked out. How dare he! The audacity! No one would dare! Not even … well, perhaps he. And Caladan. And T’riss. Azathanai those two. Yet Gothos is not.
Odd then that Gothos should bother himself. He does not serve the Azath, surely.
Osserc crossed his arms. ‘Odd to hear such a charge from one who has spent ages hiding himself away.’
The grimace of bared yellowed teeth that was Gothos’ smile flashed again. ‘Is that what you call what we are doing here?’ Before Osserc could answer that a gnarled hand rose to brush the murky air. ‘But no matter. As I am – what was it we both agreed upon … irrelevant?’
Again the deflection. Yet again the prey survives to circle the predator in the night. And if I am the prey and Gothos is not the trap nor the jaws awaiting me – then who? Or what? The Azath themselves?
‘The charge that I have asked nothing of myself is so absurd in the extreme that I would have slain anyone else for suggesting it. I closed Kurald Thyrllan! I have maintained the peace! I have done nothing but watch and ward the boundaries of that realm. I cannot even begin to tell you of the countless efforts to breach Thyrllan that I have crushed. Even my—’ He bit his tongue, so sharply did he cut himself off.
It seemed to him that the Jaghut’s smile took on an even more hungry and satisfied curl. ‘Yes?’ he prompted, though the knowledge lay in his eyes of liquid gold.
No! I will not simper here. Not before this one. Osserc leaned back to clasp his knee once more. ‘Even those of my own blood have had to be … dissuaded … now and then.’
‘How sad for you. But I was speaking of demands placed upon yourself, not others. Warding Thyrllan is all very well. It has kept you busy, I suppose. I’m sure that it has been most … distracting.’
Distracting? The word infuriated him – as did everything out of the damned Jaghut’s mouth – but then it began to take on a terrifying weight. Distracting? Distracting from what? Was there something …
He pulled his gaze away to find himself once more staring at their audience, the Nacht. Its head lay nestled in its skinny folded arms. Its mouth was open showing tiny sharp teeth. It was snoring quietly. Drool wet the table before it.
Another none-too-veiled comment? Am I trying the patience even of immortal otherworldly entities such as these? Is this a stunning victory or an abject failure? The answer to that question would go far to solving this impasse.
* * *
Shimmer dreamed of the day the Crimson Guard swore the Vow. They’d been on the run for weeks. Hunted by imperial columns. Fleeing a disastrous direct challenge of Kellanved’s forces. K’azz led them ever northward – or was being driven ever northward. They’d been part of a proud field army of fifty thousand, an alliance of contingents from across the continent. But with failure came fragmentation, desertion, and an utter melting away of any hope of alliance. Now they were reduced to little more than a ragged band of some six hundred. The hard unbowed annealed core. The true believers – such as herself. Oh, certainly, some remained because they lusted for battle, or could never admit defeat – Skinner and his followers among their numbers. But most remained for only one overriding motive. For him. For K’azz.
Of all the battles K’azz had personally led or marshalled, or the flanks he commanded, he had lost not one. It was an old story: winning the battles but losing the war. Time and again they had been let down, abandoned, or outright betrayed by those they fought beside or for. The Bloorian league of nobles. Cawn switching sides on the day of battle. Tali’s lukewarm support, as if resenting K’azz’s growing lustre as a potential political rival. The number of times the man had succeeded in extracting them from seemingly hopeless disasters under the patronage of petty princes and barons across Quon were too many to count.
But now rumours were circulating that the self-styled Emperor of Quon had lost his patience with them. That he had turned his most dreaded weapon upon them. The army of undead that he had raised through his monstrous and unhallowed black arts. The T’lan Imass.
For her part, Shimmer did not believe that only now had Kellanved taken note of them. Rather, it seemed to her that he had probably come to the conclusion that in K’azz lay a figurehead who could possibly unite resistance to his growing hegemony and here was a chance to be rid of him.
That day as they filed through the narrow ravines and passes of the foothills of the Fenn Range it came to her that they were no longer making for what she naturally assumed had been K’azz’s objective all along: the northernmost mountain fastness of his homeland, D’Avore.
Curious, she had kneed her mount forward to draw up beside him. ‘My prince—’
An easy laugh from him had stopped her. ‘Prince?’ he said, still chuckling. As always it was an infectious gently chiding laughter that made her flush, self-conscious. ‘Honorary at best, Shimmer. Those Bloorians do love their titles.’ The smile fell away. ‘At least they used to. I hear Kellanved has ordered all nobles executed. Every family in Bloor must be in the woods now burying their ridiculous fancy coats of arms.’
And he shook his head at the absurdity of it. How sad he looked, it occurred to her. Even this trivial episode had touched his heart. She lowered her attention to one of her mail-backed gloves, adjusted it. ‘We do not make for the Red Keep?’
‘No, Shimmer. Not yet, at least. A side venture first. A visit to an old locale…’ He appeared about to say more but shook his head instead. ‘Indulge me in this, yes?’
‘Of course, my—’ She caught herself.
‘Captain?’ he suggested, his mouth quirking up.
The expression made him appear even more youthful – his unshaven chin hardly dusted in light reddish-blond hairs. Shimmer cleared her throat, feeling her face heating once more. ‘Duke, at least, I should think.’
He inclined his head in acceptance. ‘Very good, Shimmer. Yes. Duke. At the least – and the most.’
Shimmer tilted her helmeted head to excuse herself and fell back. K’azz bent to talk with his old teacher and adviser mounted at his side: Stoop, siegemaster to the D’Avore family for nearly half a century.
She found herself between Blues and Smoky. Blues rode easily with a leg negligently curled up around his pommel, Seti-style. His hands free, he practised with two sticks, twisting and flicking them in blurred mesmerizing patterns. Smoky, on the other hand, rode with both hands in a death-grip on his pommel, legs clamped tight. He appeared terrified, as if his mount, desperate to murder him, was about to throw itself off the ledge they walked.
‘What word?’ Blues asked.
‘He wouldn’t say.’
Smoky let out an angry snort. ‘Why am I not surprised?’
Blues eyed the surrounding rocky slopes and the distant peaks. ‘There’s power in these mountains,’ he murmured.
‘I feel it too,’ Smoky growled and he hunched even lower on his mount. It seemed to Shimmer that the horse almost sighed its exasperation. ‘Nothing familiar though. Can’t place it.’
The sticks clacked together in one of Blues’ hands. He eyed the ridge ahead. ‘Gettin’ closer.’
Shimmer glanced back down the column where it twisted along the narrow trail. She spied Skinner in his long coat of armour riding close to the rear. Cowl was next to him, wrapped as usual in his shroud-like dirty ash-grey cloak. Together again, those two. That damned sneering assassin disturbed her like none other she’d met over a lifetime’s career of war and conflict. But even she, grudgingly, had to give the man his due: he did his job and kept Dancer’s Talons at bay.
Still, it saddened her to see Skinner drifting more and more into that one’s company. Once he’d been inseparable from K’azz. Always at his side. Their champion, many had even thought him – then. Their answer to Dassem Ultor. But each defeat and setback in their campaigning seemed to drive the man ever further fro
m K’azz’s side. There was an element, she knew, among the guard who were of the opinion that a company’s lack of success was the fault of its commander. And this was especially true of any mercenary company.
Riding the trail, the cool wind brushing at her hair where it escaped her helmet, Shimmer tightened the reins round her fist and pulled on her mail coat where it caught at her thigh. She’d been against that from the start – the idea of their turning mercenary. She’d never quite fully understood K’azz’s rationale. Something about ease of movement across Quon Tali, and not being a threat to local suzerainty.
At least so it was on the face of the papers and treaties they signed with the various princes, kings, chieftains, councillors and nobles with whom they’d taken ‘employment’. Papers these representatives were quick to throw to the wind the moment Kellanved and his motley army appeared on their borders.
In any case, turning mercenary did swell their numbers. The lustre of K’azz’s family name drew many, together with those associated with him: Skinner, Blues, Lazar, Cal-Brinn and Bars. Even the name Cowl drew recruits who wished to work with him – and learn his trade. The sort of men and women she thought they could do without. Such as Isha, Lacy and the Wickan renegade, Tarkhan.
Now, though, those who fought for money alone had long since drifted away. Now, only those who’d always regarded themselves as part of the personal guard of the Red Duke remained.
Or so she’d thought at the time.
* * *
K’azz led them up on to a narrow natural plateau hidden away among the climbing ridges of the Fenn Range. It was thickly grassed, the air cold. Nearby, a herd of wild horses startled Shimmer as they thundered off, wary of their advance.
Here K’azz had them dismount and gather in a circle. Pushing her way through the thigh-high grasses, Shimmer noted dark fisted knots of stone poking up here and there. Standing stones. But hardly cyclopean. Small and eroded. No more than headstones.
‘Feel it sizzle?’ she heard Blues murmur to the skinny young mage now at his side, Fingers.
‘It’s like ten stones pressing down on my skull,’ the kid groaned, and he held a hand to his forehead.
‘Gather round!’ K’azz called from the dusk.
‘Have a care, K’azz. This is no ordinary field,’ Smoky answered, warning.
‘I know. Gather round.’
Shimmer pressed forward into the tightening ring of the remaining guard encircling K’azz. The faces of some, she noted, held an anxious worry. And then it came to her like a sudden panic: was this it? All their battles and struggle to come to an end here in this isolated, inauspicious place? Had he brought them here to disband? Here, this very night? The suspicion clenched her heart and made it hard to breathe.
Yet across the small clear circle Stoop was not concerned. To the contrary, the old saboteur looked positively pleased. He held a crooked smile behind his grizzled beard while he scratched at his chin with the stump of his elbow.
K’azz raised his arms for silence. Yet even as he did so Skinner pressed forward, frowning, as if sharing Shimmer’s fears. Shimmer felt a brief echo of the attraction she once held for him as his blond hair blew about his still handsome features. ‘Why have we ventured so far north, K’azz?’ he demanded. ‘Are we yielding the fight?’ He turned to address the crowded company. ‘I have always maintained we should head to Tali. The city would rise to our banner. We could lead a liberating force eastward.’
The audacity! The man had just announced his plans should K’azz dissolve the company. Shimmer drew breath to shout him down, but K’azz merely raised a hand for silence and she reluctantly subsided. ‘Are you vowing that you will never abandon the fight?’ he asked in a manner remarkably composed, given this implied challenge to his authority.
Skinner now frowned in earnest. He peered about, gauging the mood of the company, and Shimmer was relieved to see hardly any support for him in the hard, disapproving expressions around the circle. ‘Of course,’ he answered easily, as if to shrug off the ridiculous question. ‘That is my very point. I counsel that we return to the struggle.’
K’azz merely gave a small nod of assent, and in this guarded reaction – giving away nothing – Shimmer recognized the commander at his most dangerous. He had somehow manoeuvred Skinner exactly where he wanted him, she realized. Yet of course he reveals nothing of it. ‘Very good. For that is my intent. That is why I have brought us here.’ He raised his chin to address the entire gathered company. ‘We are here to swear a vow!’ he began, loudly, catching everyone’s attention. ‘As many of you have already noticed, this is no random field. It is an ancient site. A place of power. Holy to our family, to our ancestors, and, some say, even to those ancient ones who preceded us upon these lands.
‘We gather here on this day in the sight of one another to swear a binding oath. What we here swear is unrelenting and unending opposition to the Malazan Empire for so long as it shall endure. To never abandon or turn away from such opposition. To this cause all gathered here must give their individual agreement and binding commitment. Those of you who know doubt, or who feel unable to pledge yourselves utterly to this cause, are free to go. Nay, are encouraged to go. And all without rancour or ill-feelings.’
While talking K’azz turned full circle to peer at every face, to fix a hard gauging eye upon every member of his remaining guard. ‘So … this is my Vow. This is what I here pledge and what I, in turn, ask of anyone who would choose to follow me. Now … what say you, Stoop?’
The wiry old siegemaster gave an easy shrug. ‘I so swear, a course.’
‘Blues?’
Their unofficial weaponmaster nodded solemnly. ‘I so swear.’
K’azz then faced Skinner. ‘Skinner? What of you?’
He was still frowning, as if sensing a trap but unable to pin it down. Finally he shrugged as well. ‘Of course. I also swear. Fighting on has been my intent all along.’
K’azz’s hard gaze now fell upon Shimmer and a cold finger seemed to press itself upon her spine. She felt a sudden weight, as if she were being sucked down into the earth beneath her feet, or the earth itself were rising up to swallow her. The pounding of hooves returned to her ears and she thought perhaps the herd of wild horses had returned. But the thunder was too deep for mere horses. Something immense moving across the land. Or is it simply my heart? She tried to speak but could make no sound. After what seemed an eternity the words escaped her numb lips.
‘I so swear.’
The punishing weight of that gaze moved on and she could breathe again. All that must have been as an instant. Blinking to clear inexplicable tears from her gaze she peered out across the tall stands of grasses weaving in the evening winds and there she spied a lone dark figure, watching. It was a woman; that much was clear. But broad, powerful and dark-skinned, her long kinky black hair wind-tossed.
Strangely panicked by the appearance of one woman – some sort of displaced tribal, Seti or Wickan – Shimmer glanced to K’azz, now asking Lean to swear. Dare she interrupt? She returned her gaze to the grasses but the woman was gone. Moved on. A refugee, perhaps, from the fighting in the south. Odd that she should be alone.
The swearing continued, K’azz demanding a personal pledge from all gathered. For some reason the ritual awakened another memory in Shimmer and she found herself drifting back even further in time to when she was a child.
‘Shimmer…’
Had that been the wind? A distant voice calling her name?
If she tried very hard she could remember a little of her youth. A farm in one of the more rural Kan provinces. She could recall feeding chickens and pigs. Harvesting rice. Playing with an army of brothers and sisters in the dry dusty ground before their family hut.
A hard upbringing. But for the most part a happy one. Until all came to an end.
Until he came. A man so old as to be nothing more than dried flesh and wisps of white hair. Or so it appeared to the child she was at the time.
She remem
bered her father bending down before her. He took her shoulders in his big hard farmer’s hands. ‘You will go with this man, Iko. It is a great merit to your family that he has chosen you. Be studious. Learn his teachings. But above all – be obedient! For it is by honouring him that you honour us. Your parents and all your ancestors before you. Do you understand?’
And she looking up at him, blinking through tears, hardly understanding. ‘Yes, Father. I swear.’
‘Very good, Iko. Do not cry. You go now to the capital. To a great school. Dance well. Bring us merit.’
‘Yes, Father.’
Then a cruel dry grip upon her wrist tugging her along and a rasping mutter. ‘I do not know why I bother. Too short you are. Too short by far. But,’ and the hand swung her up on to a cart, ‘one must do the best one can with what the gods provide.’
And if her childhood had been deprived but benign, the school proved a hundred times as harsh and in no way benign. For the discipline of the dance of the whipsword was unforgiving.
‘Shimmer.’
There it was again. That voice. Calling. More insistent this time.
The school’s lessons had been brutal but she’d survived. She wondered if she was the last of the whipsword dancers, now that the Kan court had been obliterated. Thinking back, she couldn’t exactly remember how or why she’d survived the Malazan encirclement and siege. She, the last of the Kan king’s bodyguards.
‘Shimmer!’
The voice had a presence now. An image coalesced to impose itself upon her. It was the ghostly figure of Stoop, their old siegemaster. He was peering at her closely, anxiety on his crimped brows. ‘You’ve drifted far, lass. Any further and you’ll not make it back, I think. Best to return, yes?’
The Malazan Empire Series: (Night of Knives, Return of the Crimson Guard, Stonewielder, Orb Sceptre Throne, Blood and Bone, Assail) (Novels of the Malazan Empire) Page 296